Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
I Have Questions
Twitter is revelatory. The general population has probably always had a stupid streak, but Twitter makes it possible for ignorance to light itself on fire and burn so brightly it overwhelms the sun.
Reading the rants about the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is something else. First, there seems to be a large segment of the population who thinks the prosecution is doing a good job. Now, granted, I just catch the “lowlights,” but from what I have seen, Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger has been surprised way too many times by his own witnesses.
Second, the “conventional wisdom” about the law is astoundingly bad. I mean, most people commenting on the trial would be confused watching a Matlock rerun. I could be a very rich man if I could collect a dollar from everyone who assured their fellow progressives that, no matter what, the prosecution will eventually win on appeal. That’s how bad civics education is. How the hell do that many people believe an acquittal can be appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court?
And the comments about the presiding judge, Bruce Schroeder, are something else, too. Local attorneys describe him as fair but willing to be combative. My theory, which would be easy to prove or disprove with the proper resources, is that this is not the first time this judge has witnessed this prosecutor’s ineptitude. But no journalist seems even remotely interested in any backstory between them. The media loves the clips of Schroeder’s admonitions, but doesn’t go out of their way to make clear that he makes sure the jury is out of the room when he does it.
Rittenhouse will probably be convicted on the gun charge. There is no doubt that he was underage and outside the home with a firearm. The man who supplied the weapon is probably in more trouble than the person who fired it. There is a persistent belief that Rittenhouse, who lives in Antioch, IL, carried the rifle across state lines into Wisconsin. He did not. And even if he did, there is no Federal law against that. (States have their own transport regulations but anything interstate would be the jurisdiction of the Feds.)
But one never knows how a jury will rule. Especially one that feels intimidated. The political pressure has been huge, which is why in so many of these cases overcharging has become the norm. The DA feels the heat, the jury feels the heat, and so does the judge. My only hope is that the jury is more informed than the folks on Twitter.
Published in General
Where have I been inconsistent?
Disregard as I think we cleared that up over the Babbit bit.
Regarding the abdication of police that night in the town of Kenosha (for whatever reason) I received a poignant message from a member that I believe should be reproduced here in its entirety.
*******************************************
About your comment:
https://ricochet.com/1090230/i-have-questions/comment-page-4/#respond
. . .
As was pointed out at trial, the curfew was not being enforced. When the police abdicate enforcement of each and every law of civilization, then no one at all can enforce the law? Binger asked Rittenhouse rather smarmily why he didn’t just call the fire department, why did he feel it was his place to put out a dumpster fire? And Rittenhouse said that the fire department, with which he was associated as a cadet, was busy putting out other fires. When Binger asked him why he didn’t call 911 when he saw dangerous things, Kyle said that (I don’t remember which word he used, but) the police were standing down [or were busy elsewhere].
When Kyle approached a police vehicle to surrender telling them that he had just shot or killed someone, the police told him to back off or they’d pepper spray him, and to go home (and also go to bed or some such).
When the police abandon a town to criminals and rioters, doesn’t someone else have to step in and save property from the arsonists? Or should we just let it all burn down?
(end quote)
I wanted to comment…
So here is the kernel of what had popped into my mind:
Remember Sir Robert Peel’s Nine Principles of Policing?
Also:
Looting and burning homes and businesses is murder by inches: It destroys livelihoods, permanently traumatizes individuals, and destroys the trust which is necessary for civilization.
Maybe you can make use of these fragments.
************************************************
I would only add that destroying a business that took 30 years to build can’t be replaced in just a year. Destroying it is in effect destroying 30 years of a man’s professional life and work.
Excellent remark!
The casual disregard of the destruction of businesses with comments like “they have insurance” . . . is just so maddening.
Yes, and the key moment is when the threat to property decides to also threaten your life.
It presumes facts not in evidence.
To the filth, insurance is the same as health care.
It’s a magic wand that can somehow cost nothing, yet fix everything.
Ah, I get it.
I’ve mentioned both his lack of sound judgment and his legal right to defend himself. I think both are perfectly fair topics of discussion. I’m mostly interested in his legal rights being upheld; I expect young men to act foolishly, and I’m not really interested in critiquing his wisdom or lack thereof. My only point in bringing it up at all was to say that it’s okay to simultaneously question his judgment and defend his rights.
I have not commented on his “moral” position — that is, on whether his intentions were good or bad, worthy or unworthy. My interpretation of your comment #227 was that you thought that I should take such considerations into account. I don’t, because I’m not interested in his motivation (which, to be honest, none of us can really know). Rittenhouse is no more nor less deserving of having his rights upheld whether his motives were worthy or otherwise. Nor is he any more or less deserving than the hypothetical young woman who goes out in inappropriate dress: their rights don’t depend on the worthiness of their motives.
And it privileges damnable acts to the level of at least neutral. This is another theft!
This is going meta, but we each have a fractional property in the good order of society. It is not neutral to chip away at this good order — it is another theft.
Thank you for posting it! I was too tired at the time to compose a comment that would not later need significant corrections.
The matter of looting and arson also reminded me of a passage in a darkly humorous novel by Terry Pratchett. Slightly condensed it is:
I wrote scornfully in an earlier comment about the people who dismissed the destruction caused by riots as “only property”. I would like to point out that chief among these were the elected officials who ordered the police to stand down and allow rioters to loot and burn (and to assault and murder, for that matter.) Also to be condemned were the pundits and professors and “public intellectuals” who said the same thing while praising or excusing the rioters. None of them lost homes and businesses. None of them were left wondering where they could live safe from violence. And they did not care about those who were.
Yes, I do remember! I think the phrase was, “I can’t be responsible for…” or something like that. We should be reminded of it more frequently.
The question of what are the proper ways for citizens to exercise these duties is one that could be hashed out forever, but it seems clear that the right of citizens to defend themselves and their neighbors is fundamental and must not be abridged. When government officials refuse to carry out their sworn duties to protect the public, is it any wonder that citizens–nearly all untrained amateurs–will attempt to do so? And who can blame them? The steady moral decay of the political (and intellectual) classes are why we are now debating what happened in Kenosha.
I don’t believe I said that at all. If you and your property are the target of a riot, then you absolutely can kill anyone threatening your safety and your property (I’m a Texas lawyer, but I’m not your lawyer and it’s a bit more complex than I’m going to get into here, don’t take legal advice from people on the internet).
The difference is that this kid entered the riot, leaving the property he came to help defend. That makes him a rioter, in my book. I’ve a very low threshold for what makes someone a rioter.
I’m sort of late to the party. I’ve always considered this to be a delf-defense story, but after reading all the comments, and that the one’s shot were less than stand-up citizens I went to check it out. I went to SNOPES! They debunked the criminal records of the three who were shot, by first writing about Jacob Blake, George Floyd, and Kyle Rittenhouse and showing a copy of his criminal complaint. Then they broach the subject of the three men’s criminal histories under this header.
“What We Know About the Victims — Aside From Their Rap Sheets”
Did you know that Anthony was a marvelous guy and an amazing roller skater?
Anthony Huber, 26, and per that complaint, Huber, who was 18 years old at the time, threatened his brother and grandmother at their home with a knife, choked the brother, and demanded that they follow his orders. The complaint said the brother wanted to take Huber to a hospital, apparently for emergency mental health help, but Huber resisted. In the end, he was charged with strangulation and suffocation and false imprisonment, both of which are felony crimes.
Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and at age 19, Rosenbaum was sentenced to prison for sexually abusing five children — all boys between the ages of 9 and 11 — in Arizona’s Pima County in early 2002.
Gaige Grosskreutz, now 27, injured. found guilty in 2016 of breaking Wisconsin’s law governing the use of dangerous weapons — a misdemeanor offense — per Milwaukee County court records. He had apparently gone somewhere “armed while intoxicated,” though the court records did not elaborate on what exactly had happened.
Additionally, Grosskreutz at various points received tickets for minor offenses including disobeying police officers and making loud noises, the court records showed. However, no evidence showed he had indeed committed burglary, like supporters of the alleged killer claimed, but he had been arrested on suspicion of the crime in 2012.
One last thing. This is how Snopes lists the alleged criminal offenses, with a screen shot, with a devils tail logo over the center of the image which is darkened.
The word that the logo covers is “strangulation”.
And what of Rittenhouse? He drove without a license, violated curfew by a twenty minutes or so, and he might not even have known it, and apparently being a few months underage for carrying a rifle in public or something.
And this is what most people are focusing on. Not the fact that he was attacked and had a guy draw a pistol on him and “Gaige Grosskreutz was armed with a pistol when 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse blew his bicep apart with a semi-automatic rifle in Kenosha, Wisconsin. In a Facebook post that’s gone viral, Grosskreutz regrets not killing the teen.”
At the end of the day, I don’t care what the jury concludes at this trial. If you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. This child should have stayed home. If he went to defend the car lot, he should have stayed at the car lot. Sure, it was self-defense but he brought it on himself, and if you go looking for trouble you’re bound to find it. What did he think would happen when he left the car dealership? He was armed with a rifle, so he must have recognized it was dangerous.
Rittenhouse is the kind of idiot that makes people want to trim the second amendment. I think most people recognize that he behaved recklessly, and they might clamor for more gun control. Had he limited his desire to be a hero to staying at the dealership and not putting out distant fires, then he would have likely had no problems at all. Instead, he waded into the riot and found trouble.
We’ve noticed. Probably January 6 was a riot, too, right?
When the government and the Fed push the economy around so much, they are responsible for a lot more things than they actually take care of. It’s disgusting.
I think the riotous behavior does in fact make it a riot.
I am not willing to say merely being present at a riot is riotous behavior.
I’ve been consistent since January 6 saying so. Ashli Babbit was absolutely a rioter, and I have no pity for her fate. She shouldn’t have been trying to force her way past a barricade into a sensitive government building. The shooter shouldn’t have been protected and shielded from a review and he may very well have acted illegally, but it was a riot and I don’t care what happened to that individual rioter.
The only reason most people here think Ashli deserves pity is because she conforms to their team’s political sentiments. But it would be wrong if she were Antifa and it’s wrong if she is the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary.
This statement kind of undermines your case, doesn’t it? Doesn’t contradict it, but undermines it, showing an unseemly emotional involvement that affects your objectivity.
If Rittenhouse had not been armed that night he would have been either savagely beaten, or killed, that night, as so many were before him who ran afoul of these raving mobs. If he had been killed, we would not know his name today. It would be just something that happened at a “mostly peaceful protest”.
And Thoughtful, Reasonable Liberals(TM); would be utterly indifferent to his death.
Like Jessica Doty Whitaker. (more or less)
Although I hope Rittenhouse is acquitted on the more serious charges, I hope some sort of consequences follow, perhaps conviction on the misdemeanor carrying charge. The worst outcome is he gets nothing and the “hero” narrative takes hold. Then, the next riot, you can bet there won’t be just one Kyle Rittenhouse running around with a rifle, but a half-dozen other high school kids loading out with weapons they don’t understand putting themselves into situations over their heads. Hey, if Rittenhouse can be a hero running around town with an AR-15, why not me?
Then we’ll get outcomes even more tragic than this one. Maybe they will shoot each other, or shoot some innocent person. Kyle Rittenhouse actually got lucky. He was using a gun way overpowered for personal self-defense. The AR-15 is designed to be deadly accurate at 500 yards and its bullets are still dangerous at a mile or more. Rittenhouse didn’t understand the ammo he was using, and didn’t realize his rounds can go right through a human body and kill people beyond the target. It was just good fortune there weren’t people behind the people he shot (or wherever his bullets ended up landing). They might not have been the bad guys many seem happy here got shot, but maybe a Good Samaritan coming to help a kid in trouble. Next time, all the wannabe Rittenhouse copycats might not be so lucky.
While court cases and so forth do rely upn the nitty-gritty, this is embedded in a larger debate. Either we will have a society or we will not. Either we will defend our rights, property, and lives (granted, through different means), or we will not.
If Rittenhouse is some kind of idiot, he’s *my* kind of idiot. The rule of law is breaking down in general (not majority, not everywhere, but the trend is going the wrong way). The police explicitly *did not* enforce the law where that property was threatened, and where Rittenhouse’s life was threatened multiple times. Every time the governments or police refuse to confront trouble, trouble is reinforced. That’s why so many commiecrat jurisdictions refuse to engage. They are brownshirting us through their collusive thugs in the streets.
People like Kyle refuse to have our country stolen from us. People like me.
Most of what you say here is directly belied by the footage, and despite your pedigree for 2A rights, sounds like leftist prattle against 2A. Maybe you’re more an it’s-for-hunting 2A type?
The shock and horror at the weapon and the ammo is misplaced. Rittenhouse knew more about his weapon than a lot of active duty folks. You don’t need to be SAE-certified to get a driver’s license, and you don’t need to know a lot of the finer points to be good and responsible with a gun. And the footage shows him being good and responsible.
My only criticism is his tendency to stop after a single round, but in a mob, maybe economizing hard is the right way to go. You never know how long it may be until you can finally fight your way out of the riot zone — which he did.
Kyle admitted in his testimony that he didn’t understand the AR-15 (he testified that he picked it because it looked cool) and was unaware what type of ammo was in the gun, or that the type of ammo he had loaded (full metal jacket) would go right through someone.
Both Skyler and I were in the Marine Corps. I guarantee you that Marines know the M16 upside down, inside out, and what the ammo can and can’t do before they are allowed to handle a single live round.
To my simple mind, the year or more that the young man has spent in prison and dealing with the government attempting to take the next 20 years of his life from him are consequences enough, by far and away, for his youthful indiscretions. Had many more honest and hard-working Kenoshans been willing to physically stand against the Antifa and BLM thugs, the town would have proudly survived its near destruction and sent a message to the anarchists that creating fear and destruction doesn’t work in the United States of America. The kid is a hero and your worst-case scenario is my best-case outcome.
Yes, and if he had loaded any sort of expanding or frangible round, he would be facing much worse for his “cop-killer” ammo. The military uses ball/FMJ not because it is so deadly but because more effective ammo is (effectively) forbidden by the Hague conventions or something. FMJ is what you get when you don’t ask for anything in particular. I recognize the point about overpenetration of soft targets (people, drywall).
I envy and admire the USMC’s focus on 360 mastery of the rifle. In the Navy it is nearly non-existent, and to my surprise, mastery is fairly rare in the Army as well. After I got serious and learned myself up on the Beretta, a realized that I knew a bunch more than most folks around me — Navy, Army, Guard, AF. In a combat zone. I did *not* know more about the M-4 than most folks, but I didn’t carry one on my second tour, and the infantryman lives by the long-arm, not the side-arm. Even so, these guys were largely experts at maintaining and operating the thing. They didn’t know much more than Rittenhouse about ammo because all they get is FMJ and tracer.
I own an AR, as well as a Mini-14. I bought the AR for standardization and compatibility (ammo, mags, parts, accessories) if things should no longer be so available. I bought the Mini-14 for ammo compatibility and (get this) I like the way it looks. Alright, to be precise, it looks like an Elmer Fudd gun with the 5-rd mag inserted, and most people who get scared a lot but know very little would think it is a hunting rifle, not a no-kidding combat weapon. It’s not “scary”. It is heavy.
Anyway, I didn’t say you didn’t know what you were talking about. I said I disagree with your conclusions. Like you, I won’t object if he catches some minor charges (which I have not looked into, much), but I absolutely want him to be celebrated. If the police and government of my generation refuse to defend the Republic, then perhaps to our shame and dishonor, the youth of the next generation will just do it on their own. It beats the collective shrug we currently offer to the forces of riot and anarchy.